


The Fading World

by SilverDagger



Category: Claymore
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Ficlet, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-24
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-02-26 20:18:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2665016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDagger/pseuds/SilverDagger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miria struggles with her choices after Pieta, and Tabitha won't let her grieve alone. </p><p>Written for the prompt <a href="http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/273536.html?thread=10156672#cmt10156672">and the sun goes down on a broken town</a> at fic_promptly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fading World

They have no choice but to leave the dead behind.

It's not what Miria wanted, for the dead or for the living, but the danger hasn't passed, and she will not let them trade safety for sentiment now. They turn their backs, vanish into the falling snow and let it cover their tracks behind them. By the time nightfall comes, it will be as if they had never existed at all.

 _Good,_ Miria thinks. They need to be gone.

She allows no fire, that evening, no foraging for supplies, nothing that might offer a watcher a sign of anyone living. That there will be a watcher, she has no doubt, and though she has her suspicions, she cannot yet guess where Galatea will stand.

They feel no cold, but the survivors huddle together all the same, shoulder to shoulder against the far wall of the cave, seeking comfort from each other. Grief will pass, Miria knows, or at least lessen with time. She's seen it happen before, in countless others. She's felt it herself. They will cling to pain, and then it will fade, and whether it leaves fire or ashes in their hearts is not for her to say. But they're her responsibility all the same: her six, the only soldiers she could save. She ought to be there with them, but there's a gulf she can't bring herself to step across. She needs air, or solitude, or something less easily acquired. Certainty, perhaps - some indication that her choices were the right ones, or at least forgivable. 

She steps out of the cave to find herself momentarily stunned by the brightness, blinking in the gleam of sunlight on snow. The wind hits her face and stings her eyes as she walks up to the edge and looks over, into the valley and the ravenous emptiness of the earth below. She stands there for a long while in the shadow of the North with snowflakes lighting in her hair, too numb to think, feeling the last chain severed that had bound her to the Organization's will.

She feels defenseless without youki, slow, her senses muffled. But though she can sense nothing beyond the physical, her ears are sharp enough to catch the crunch of a footstep in snow behind her. She's expecting Clare or maybe Deneve, come to ask about plans or take her to task for her failures, but it's neither. It's - Tabitha, number 31, standing there with eyes downcast and looking more lost than she ever had in battle. As soon as Miria looks in her direction, she says, "I'll go, if you prefer it."

Miria starts to say something in reply, but the wind steals her words, leaves her with nothing to offer in their place. Down on the frozen plain, the town is already half covered over with snow, and the swords of the fallen cast long shadows in the low light. Set against a landscape of blinding white, Pieta seems so small in the wake of the Silver King's wrath, with only a few ghosts and the men who killed them left to remember what happened.

Six, though. There are six still alive. Five in the cave, friends and strangers both, and one standing right in front of her, waiting for an answer.

"I think," she hears herself say, "that I'd prefer it if you stayed."

Tabitha gives her a wordless nod, the shadow of a smile passing across her face and vanishing too quickly, and Miria wonders if she wears the same hollow-eyed look, trying for resolute and only managing tired. She has no right to ask for comfort, and she left cold behind long ago, but she doesn't protest too much when Tabitha drapes a cloak around her shoulders and leads her to sit against the cliff wall, away from the ledge. The warmth of her hands on Miria's arms cuts through the chill, there and gone and fixed stubbornly in memory, one more thing she has no right to and can't help wanting anyway. Miria expects her to retreat again, duty or kindness fulfilled, but she takes a place by the mouth of the cave like a knight settling in for some vigil, and Miria isn't sure she would leave if ordered to. She's glad of that, suddenly - for all she wanted to escape from the eyes of others, it's going to be a bad night to be alone.

 _We did what we could,_ she tells herself, _we haven't lost, we're not fallen,_ and with Tabitha standing guard at her side, the others safe and strong enough to heal, it doesn't seem so much like a lie. The sun sinks low on the horizon, and they watch it fall beneath the mountains, the last red light of evening washing over Pieta's rooftops and broken walls until night closes in.

It will rise again.


End file.
